by Derek Baker

Psalm 130
Ezekiel 18:21-28
Matthew 5:20-26

I often have to remind myself to live in the moment. And I should probably remind myself of this far more than I already do.

At best, I do so when I realize I'm letting myself feel overwhelmed by the tasks facing me, anxious for a relative or friend, or am otherwise just living in my head and not actually living my life. Yet while I've long appreciated — too often from afar — the benefits of living consciously, I'd never before considered it a moral issue, "merely" an existential one.

God, as I read in Ezekiel, tells his people that the "now" is where God is and where they should be. Prophesying the coming invasion and exile at the hands of the Chaldeans, Ezekiel warns his nation that past wickedness is no bar to being saved from the looming threat if the sinner turns from sin and does what is lawful and right. Neither is past righteousness any guarantee of salvation, as Ezekiel understands it, if we turn from righteousness to sin.

In turning from wickedness to righteousness, Ezekiel seems to imply, the person is in a new state of being: "They shall surely live; they shall not die." It is the choice of a moment — this moment — that determines righteousness and unrighteousness. (And it is probably worth remembering that we usually read back into Ezekiel differently than his contemporaries did or very likely than even most modern day Jews do.)

In such a sense, "now" is the experience of eternity — which makes for a very Zen form of Judaism, seen this way. Yet it has its corollary in what we believe. We live in the Resurrection now — now at the door of an empty tomb, now at Eucharist, now in the Spirit, now in death. Time (and one of its nasty winged monkeys, the progress report) is more our experience than God's, who stands outside of time. Time may even be an obstacle to our experience of God, liturgical calendars notwithstanding.

Jesus goes further, and frequently reminds us to live in the moment with others, where God truly is. In this Gospel lesson, whatever separation I put between myself and others, I put between myself and God, be it murder, anger, insult, or even mild disdain. There aren't degrees of sin and separation in this reading, because God isn't comparing and contrasting us against our past performance; that's our way of seeing things, not God's. We are called to consciousness in whatever we are doing now, and particularly in regard to our relationships as they exist today.

And so: To whom do you owe an apology or a word of gratitude right now? Go and give it. Live in this moment as if it were eternity because, from God's perspective, I suspect it probably is.